Acceptance vs. wallowing

[cjsmith]

Sometimes I'm very unhappy about something and I know there's not a darn thing I can do about it except come to some kind of acceptance. (People who have never had a problem outside your power to solve, stop reading now; save your innocence.)

I don't know how to accept something I loathe except to face it over and over and over. Otherwise, I go into denial, not useful long-term. So I keep repeating the unpleasant truth to myself until it doesn't hurt any more. I analyze. I try to find loopholes. I want to know just where the boundaries are. I want to know how bad it is, and I want to face that.

I wallow in it. If I don't, I keep getting unpleasantly surprised when it slaps me in the face.

So far there are not many things in my life that are bad enough that this technique doesn't work. But there are a couple... and it isn't working... and it's been years.

I am quite tired of being unhappy about this crap. If wallowing isn't going to work I can sure be happier day-to-day if I ditch it. Any other techniques??

Comments

[thorswitch.livejournal.com]

Oh, boy, does that resonate with me! I've spent years trying to figure out how to deal with things I can't control. Most days, I deal with it ok - I don't really wallow in the mess, I try to find things I can do to keep things interesting and to give me an escape from the physical pain I have, but it's really never very far from my mind.

Still, there are days where the depression I feel over the situation is almost overwhelming, and when that happens, I just have to make myself - I don't know - plow through somehow, until the anger and frustration finally give way to some other feelings, or I get immersed enough in something else that I don't think about it anymore. When that happens, I have a few different things I can do - the basic goal of which is to stop myself from thinking about what I can't do anymore. The most effective for me is to sleep, though I know that's not always a practical option. Because I'm homebound and thus never have to be anywhere at any time or otherwise need a structured schedule, I can sleep whenever I want - but almost always, even if it's only a short nap, when I get up, my brain has moved onto other things and I'm doing better than I had been.

Next most effective is to listen to music loudly enough that there's not much room in my brain for other thoughts. Its about as close to meditation as I can get (for some reason I've never been able to do the whole "empty your mind" thing) Usually after a couple rounds of some good Pink Floyd or (duh) Rush I'm back on an even kilter and able to move on to something else.

Now, I realize neither of those things are ways of actually resolving how I feel about the things I can't change - but I don't know if I'll find a way to actually stop being angry or frustrated or even feeling sorry for myself, so for me, the best way to deal with the whole thing is to just find ways to avoid letting it overwhelm me. And I found over time that the bouts of depression, frustration, anger and self-pity have become less frequent - in part, I think, because the longer it goes on, the more I just adapt to the fact that it's the reality of how my life is, and I think that because I make myself block or ignore the feelings of helplessness that I sometimes have, I don't have them as often, because I know that I'll do something to keep myself from ruminating on it for any longer than it take for me to get one of my diversions to kick in.

I don't know if any of that is helpful, but I thought I'd offer it to you anyway.

I hope you're doing better and I'm sorry it took so long to get around to responding!

[[[[ HUGS!! ]]]]